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What’s Next for Rural Broadband?

Now that most of the CAF II money and A-CAM money has been awarded, what’s next for rural broadband? If you ask the FCC that question they are likely to answer that there might yet be one more CAF II auction to fund the 261,000 homes that went unclaimed in the last auction. However, I think this is a much bigger question.

There are still tens of millions of homes that don’t have a broadband option that meets the FCC’s current definition of 25/3 Mbps. That includes all of the places that were funded by the CAF II funds provided to the big telcos and that were only required to provide broadband with speeds of 10/1 Mbps. It also includes numerous other homes that don’t have fast broadband and that are mis-categorized by the inadequate FCC broadband maps that are populated falsely by the big ISPs.

One of CCG’s products is performing surveys and related market research in rural areas. We’ve done a lot of surveys and also asked people to take speed tests in rural communities where the actual speeds at homes are significantly lower than the advertised speeds and the speeds shown on the FCC maps. I’m not just talking about rural farms, but also in sizable towns like county seats where the broadband is still pretty crappy.

It’s obvious that this FCC is working hard to be able to claim that they have taken care of the rural broadband problem. They want to say that they’ve funded broadband everywhere and that their job is done. What they are never going to admit is that the job will never be done until rural areas have the same kind of broadband infrastructure as cities.

This particular FCC is pretending that the need for broadband is sitting still, when in fact the demand for household broadband, both for speeds and for total download volumes keep doubling every three or four years. By the time the current FCC chairman has been in his seat for four years, the comparative quality of rural broadband will have halved due to this increase in demand.

Don’t interpret what I just said to mean that I have disdain for the current FCC. The last FCC under Chairman Tom Wheeler was a huge contributor to the problem when they awarded billions of dollars to the big telcos to make broadband upgrades over seven years to 10/1 Mbps – at a time when 10/1 Mbps already didn’t meet the definition of broadband. That was obviously a political decision since the original plan was to award all of the CAF II funds by reverse auction – which would have helped to fund a lot of rural fiber.

Even if the FCC was highly motivated to solve the rural broadband gap they don’t have the tools to do so. The FCC’s only tool for funding more broadband is the Universal Service. I wrote a blog last week noting how this fund is already overcommitted. Since I wrote that blog I looked at my own cellphone bills and my family alone is contributing several hundred dollars per year towards the USF fund. We are not going to get the many billions we need to expand broadband by taxing landline and cellphone users.

The fix needs to come from Congress. That doesn’t seem likely from the current Congress that already approved a $600 million fund for rural broadband grants and then added on a provision that made the grants nearly impossible to implement. Clearly influenced by lobbyists, Congress added a provision that the grants couldn’t be used in areas where more than 10% of homes already have 10/1 Mbps broadband – and there are very few such areas.

I honestly have a hard time understanding Congress’s reluctance to address rural broadband. When I go to rural counties these days I’m told that getting better broadband has become the number one local issue. I know that rural folks and rural politicians are pleading with their state and national representatives to find broadband funding.

I also know that most politicians say they are in favor of rural broadband. I’ve only seen a handful of politicians in the last decade who told their constituents that they don’t support rural broadband funding. I’ve also found that rural broadband is a nonpartisan issue and at the local level politicians of both parties understand that communities need better broadband.

I wish I could end this blog by suggesting a solution for the problem, but there isn’t any unless the states and the federal government decide at some point to help. State broadband programs providing matching grants have seen some success. I’m sure that federal matching grants would also help as long as they weren’t structured to be giveaways to the big ISPs.

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2 thoughts on “What’s Next for Rural Broadband?”

I was encouraged by this morning’s news that Town of Breckenridge, CO is committed to rolling their own fiber throughout town. While other small towns in CO have similar projects, this is the first resort town to do so. When I was working for State of CO on broadband mapping, many rural community leaders told me they were waiting on a government or Big Telco solution to their anemic internet issues. Its now most a decade later and prospects for the Trump administration or Centurylink to improve their broadband are as remote as ever. If its important to a community, they will find a way to fund and build a better network.